Meet Nicole

Nicole and I on the last night of her Program.
May 2015

Leading up to my program, I read a lot of blogs, watched a lot of vlogs, and scrolled the Facebook pages at length, trying to know everything about the program that I could possibly find out. The one thing that I kept reading from alumni were their cutesy stories about meeting their best friend of their entire life, or their significant other, or their long lost brother/sister/cousin/parakeet. Whatever. I was skeptical. I have also heard this same bullshit about college, and yet as a junior in college at the time, I had yet to even make a friendly acquaintance let alone my best friend. Because of this, I was starting to feel like I didn't make friends well. 

So I went into this program expecting to be friendly with people, but not find people who would change my life. And let me tell you how wrong I was. Nicole and I trained together at the beginning of our program on the Vision House along with another girl named Ileen. My training consisted of sitting in a cold, damp basement for five solid days just learning spiels. The Vision House was an "eighteen minute long guided walking tour about environmental and sustainable living." That meant that we had to learn an eighteen minute long spiel. And don't call them scripts. God forbid. If you called it a script, they would jump all over you because people who studied scripts were in entertainment. And trust me, this was not entertainment. But I digress.

Nicole and I on Space Mountain
on my birthday! 1/6/2015

Nicole and I immediately took to each other. Mostly because Ileen would often disappear into "the Tunnels" to learn her spiel alone or with our trainer. Nicole and I were more self sufficient. But the funny thing is that I didn't really have a choice about being Nicole's friend, because Nicole did not give me a single second of peace during our entire five day experience in the basement. She was constantly interrupting my memorizing and was asking me questions and asking to study together. She's very outgoing like that. I hate outgoing people, usually, but for some reason she did not get on my nerves. Ileen did. Ileen killed me. But Nicole? Nicole was charming in her insistence to be friends with everybody. And I mean everybody. 

I could go on forever about those first days in the basement, but that would be pointless. What matters is how Nicole and I quickly became the best of friends. We were inseparable. Everyone knew it. We were the best of friends in our CP group. Plus Luke, but he's a story for another day. When I was having issues with my roommates, I practically moved in with Nicole. I would stay at her apartment from the time we got home from work until we were both falling asleep on her couch watching Netflix. Nicole drove me wherever I needed to go (she had a car, I didn't) and I think the reason why she liked me so much is because no matter how many times she offered to take me to the store, I almost always turned her down.

Nicole and I on Dinosaur, January 2015

I will tell you the very moment that I knew that Nicole was more than just a "Florida" friend but instead a friend for life. The moment when I realized just how well she really, really knew me. We were at work "green walling" and I had just had a miserable day. Most of my days started to get very miserable because of a never-ending issue with my training manager and "computer glitches" and it "not being my turn" and other bullshit (another story for another day). But it was the end of another long shift at the Vision House, I was feeling miserable, and Nicole looked at me and said "You want me to take you to Target after work?" That was it. She offered to drive me to Target. She knew how much I loved Target and was willing to drive me there after work if that was what it took to make me feel better. And it did.

We had Panda Express for dinner, and then shopped at Target for a long time. We got Starbucks and just wandered around. We kinda grocery shopped, kinda browsed, kinda had a purpose, kinda didn't. But it was great. It was amazing. And it was exactly what I needed and that was when I was like, this girl is the best person I could have ever gotten.

Nicole, however, was not spring advantage. She was merely spring, and abandoned me in May whereas I was stuck until August (of course, I still had Luke but again another long story). She had to go back to her amazing life in Boston where she was going to start grad school and move in with her boyfriend and be an adult while I was trapped in Disney. But that isn't where our friendship ends, because I formed a real, honest to God friendship with her. 

Nicole and I in Wisconsin together, November 2014

We still talk every single day. In November she and my mom coordinated this really elaborate weekend where she SURPRISED me here in Wisconsin and we spent a great weekend together. In January we went to Disney World together for my birthday. She is my best friend and part of the reason why it terrifies me to do another program is because I know that no program would ever be the same without her.